


Among Us

by imgoingtohellforthis_saveme



Category: Among Us (Video Game), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: AND!, Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Human Impostor(s) (Among Us), M/M, hey there!, i feel like an among us veteran bc there are so many more tags than when i started lmao, i will be updating tags as we continue, i'm very excited about it, like with ships and other stuff so stick around!, oh please please participate i really want to keep writing for this, oh wait haha this is an AU AU (Among Us Alternate Universe), please participate or i will be sad :(, so you get to choose which member to focus on, that's all for now cheers, this is an INTERACTIVE au, this is an among us fic altered to fit star trek, which is pretty cool, you choose who that member VOTES TO EJECT!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27095140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imgoingtohellforthis_saveme/pseuds/imgoingtohellforthis_saveme
Summary: CAPTAIN'S LOG, ABRIDGED:Captain's log: Star date 49532.6Recorded by: Captain Kim NamjoonToday we were ejected from spacedock, at warp 7, repairs unfinished. By the time Commander Min managed to shut down the warp core, we had already been marooned out here in the middle of nowhere.I’ve sent out a distress signal, but the nearest ship, the Mallenta, won’t arrive for fourteen days at their max warp, and we’re stuck with minimum impulse power. So we're not going anywhere.To make it even better, I got a transmission from the Recis station, the planet we docked above, that says the parasite they’ve been monitoring has escaped and disappeared. They scanned our ship for life signs, and all they can tell us is that it’s infected one of our crew, but not which one.Only the bridge crew and chief medical officer are on the ship - 7 of us. That’s it. The report they sent me says that it infects someone, and it takes them over. They don't even know themselves until it's too late.It’s among us. And it’ll kill us all.End Log.--NOTE: this is an INTERACTIVE au. see tags :)
Relationships: Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin
Comments: 42
Kudos: 17





	1. It begins

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I'm really excited about this. Please put your vote into the comments below: what you need to choose will be at the end of the fic. And of course, feedback is greatly appreciated. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Quick description of the BTS members' ranks: 
> 
> Captain Kim Namjoon
> 
> First Officer: Commander Kim Seokjin: Science Officer
> 
> Second Officer: Commander Min Yoongi: Chief Engineer
> 
> Lieutenant Commander Jung Hoseok: Chief Medical Officer 
> 
> Lieutenant Kim Taehyung: Chief Tactical Officer
> 
> Lieutenant Park Jimin: Navigation Officer / Helmsman
> 
> Ensign Jeon Jungkook: Communications Officer

___________________________________________________

CAPTAIN’S LOG, FULL:

_Captain’s log: Star date 49532.6_

Recorded by: Captain Kim Namjoon

Today we were ejected from spacedock, at warp 7, repairs unfinished. Repairs barely started, really. We really took a beating from those Romulans, and my ship is falling apart beneath us.

By the time Commander Min managed to shut down the warp core, we had already been marooned out here at…. my navigation console isn’t working. We’re in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve sent out a distress signal, but the nearest ship, the Mallenta, won’t arrive for fourteen days at their max warp, and we’re stuck on impulse power.

To make it even better, I got a transmission from the Recis station, the planet we docked above, that says the parasite they’ve been monitoring has escaped and disappeared. They scanned our ship for life signs, and all they can tell us is that it’s infected one of our crew, but not which one.

Only the bridge crew and medical officer are on the ship - so 7 of us. That’s it. The report they sent me had detailed accounts of how it works. It infects someone, and it takes them over. They don’t even know until it’s too late.

I’m torn between relief that none of the other crew are on the ship, that they’re all in spacedock, and terror that it’s just me and my crew. These are my friends. And one of them is going to try to kill me?

My personal feelings don’t matter. I need to be objective. And the fact of the matter is -

It’s among us. And it’ll kill us all.

___________________________________________________

“Computer, end recording.”

Namjoon rubs his face in his hands. He’s exhausted, and his head aches. The clock on his desk reads 0300 hours - it’s been a hell of a day. This wasn’t in the command manuals: how to deal with a mysterious parasite that’s infected one of his most trusted officers. Never in his entire Starfleet career had he ever thought he would encounter this.

Romulans, shapeshifters, that one distant Borg sighting, alien metals that blinded half the crew: those were enough to chill him to his bones. But now, with the threat internal, he’s lost. He doesn’t even know where to begin. Who can he trust? Can he even trust himself?

He reaches for his coffee mug absently and bumps it - it slides across his tiny black desk and nearly topples onto the floor. Empty.

He needs some more coffee. He needs a walk. He needs some sleep. He needs to be off this damn ship that’s falling apart at the seams. He rolls up the sleeves on his sweaty uniform instead. It’ll have to do.

 _Buzz._ That’s the comm on the outside of his quarters. Someone wants to enter.

“Come in,” he says, on reflex. The white door hisses open before he can shove his words back down his throat.

“You’re gonna have to be more careful about that, Captain. What if I were here to kill you?” It’s Seokjin. His trusty first officer. Buddies in Starfleet Academy, they somehow managed to find their way back to each other. When Namjoon heard that Jin was assigned to the Ferox with him, he tried so hard not to whoop in joy he almost cried instead.

“Sorry, _Commander,_ ” Namjoon replies. “What are you doing up? You should get some rest.”

“I’m working on some analysis of the files Recis station sent us. Trying to see if I can scan for this thing or something, but they didn’t specify how they detected it.”

“Any success?”

A slow shake of the head. “I’ll keep trying. Comms were shaky before, but now they’re on the fritz, so no new information has been able to come through.” Jin looks like as much of a mess as Namjoon does. His hair looks like he ran his hands through it at least a few times on his way over, his uniform is rumpled, and he keeps taking these deep, slow blinks that tell Namjoon that he’s trying not to fall asleep on his feet.

“Rope in Hoseok, too. He may be able to help.”

Jin nods, and turns to leave. “On it.”

“ _Tomorrow,_ Jin. I’m serious. Get some rest.”

“Alright. You too.”

“Good night. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

___________________________________________________

_The next morning_

Namjoon slaps the briefing table. It makes a very satisfying sound, but now his hand stings. “All right. We’ve learned about this parasite. You’ve all got your task assignments. Now. How do we keep people safe? Ideas?”

“Go in pairs?” Jungkook suggests. Namjoon tries not to shiver. It’s too cold. There must be something wrong with the atmospheric regulators.

“No, groups of three. Too easy to take over a partner,” Taehyung says. Namjoon spots Jungkook wring his hands behind his back.

“That’s too slow. Repairs are scattered all over the place. If we have to go in groups of three, this bucket of bolts is going to creak and groan its way to an early death, and then we’re really dead.” Yoongi this time.

“If we go individually, sure, repairs will go faster, but we’ll also die faster,” Taehyung snaps back. “Your head’s twisted off like that,” he mimes breaking a neck, “and they’re gone. No one would find your body until the next morning.”

“Lieutenant. Quit the theatrics. All of you - stick with someone if you can. Three people together is best. If not, go alone,” Namjoon decides. He doesn’t like it, but they need to get going. The faster they do repairs, the faster they can meet up with the Mallenta. Time versus safety. They can have one, but not the other. God. Is he making the right decision? Is the parasite in him, already, influencing him into making bad choices? He shakes it off. He needs to lead. “Commander Min, those combadges ready?”

“Yes, Captain. Okay, here’s how it works. This red, circular combadge right here? Tap it like you would your normal Starfleet one. It’ll transport everyone back into this room. Use it only in emergencies, or if you need to urgently tell everyone something. Got it?”

“Got it,” they echo.

Yoongi passes the combadges out, and they all clip them next to their Starfleet one. Jimin looks pale, Namjoon notices, and Jungkook’s hands shake slightly.

“Get going,” Namjoon says. “We’ve got work to do.”

___________________________________________________

Jungkook looks at his PADD with his list of tasks. His are coded green - Yoongi had said something about keeping track of your list so they don’t get mixed up, and that they’ll be able to easily tell who doesn’t finish theirs or purposely messes them up and should thus be regarded with suspicion.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to Jungkook, because of how many other variables there are, but he’s just going to go with it. It’s not like he had any better ideas anyway. He wipes his clammy hands on his uniform shirt and resists looking behind him.

 _What if the imposter is following behind you?_ His brain very helpfully wonders. _No, it’s not,_ he tells himself. _What if the imposter is right around that corner up there?_ It ponders. _Stop it, you monkey brain,_ Jungkook tells himself. He looks around the corner anyways, and puts his hand on the phaser that Taehyung had insisted they all carry.

_“If none of us have weapons, aren’t we all safer?” Hoseok had asked during the briefing._

_“If all of us have weapons, aren’t we all safer?” Taehyung had countered._

_Namjoon had looked between them for a few seconds. “You will all be armed.”_

Jungkook has fired a phaser two times, and both of those times someone died. To be fair, they were both Romulans, but watching anything die in front of you, screaming? Horrible.

Jungkook has fired a phaser two times, and he wishes it were zero.

First stop: Comms. He’s only got a piece of the puzzle, because he’s only supposed to fix a bunch of shorted circuits. Phaser blast, probably. Regardless, he won’t be fixing them by himself. Which is good, because then he can’t mess it up, but also bad, because then he can’t do it well and prove himself. Or whatever.

Wait. He needs to go to Engineering first to grab tools.

First stop: Engineering.

___________________________________________________

Jin takes a short detour to his quarters to grab his files on the parasite. As he leaves, he notices Taehyung standing strangely in the middle of the hallway, looking at him. It’s creepy.

“Lieutenant?” Jin ventures, acutely aware of the light weight of his phase pistol.

He snaps out of it. “Sorry, Commander. I think the insanity of all of this has finally hit me.” Taehyung smiles awkwardly and continues. Unsettled, Jin waits until the harsh clicking of his Starfleet issue boots fades into the distance before heading down to Sickbay.

___________________________________________________

“Doctor?”

Hoseok startles, white coat halfway on, one sleeve still flopping uselessly next to him. “Oh, Commander. You scared me.” The bright, antiseptically white light in Sickbay gives Jin a cold, unnatural pallor.

“Sorry. Here, what do you make of this? This thing’s got insane tissue elasticity.”

“Hm. Let’s see if we can synthesize it - we might be able to detect it if we know what it’s made of. You got anything more specific than this?” He shoves his arm in the dangling sleeve while peering down at Jin’s PADD.

“No, not until Comms get fixed.”

“Well, we’ll have to start here, then.” Hoseok starts pulling out petri dishes. They clatter on the lab bench, and it’s jarring for some reason. Jin has a sudden urge to look around, scan his environment, because somehow the sound only makes the room feel more empty. “Who’s on it? Comms, I mean.”

Jin busies himself by typing rough specifications into the synthesizer. _Beep. Beep. Beep. Whirr._ They’ll have to start general and try to narrow it down manually. “Mm, I have no idea. Min went to great pains to make sure none of us know the others’ tasks.”

Hoseok pauses, hands wrapped around two different reagent bottles. “That’s a little weird.” One of the bottles, with a clear liquid inside, is labeled ‘No!! This is not water do not drink!!!’

Jin shrugs. “A little, yeah. But speaking of weird, did you see Lieutenant Kim after the briefing?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I left my quarters and he was just… staring at me. It was unnerving, to say the least.”

“He seemed totally fine to me. A little subdued, but we all are.”

“Huh.”

___________________________________________________

Taehyung’s path to the engines happens to coincide with Jin’s to his quarters. It’s a tiny little voice in his head that makes him slow down and follow far enough behind Jin that Jin can’t see him, instead of speeding up to walk with him like they usually do.

He seems too unaffected. Jin’s not a Vulcan, he must be feeling some sort of panic or nausea or, what the hell, _hunger_ or something, like Taehyung is feeling. (The panic and the nausea. Not the hunger. Actually, he’s a little hungry. But he digresses.) Instead, Jin just heads down to his quarters, easy as you please. It’s a little suspicious, Taehyung thinks. He saw him go into the Captain’s quarters yesterday too. Now, he knows that the First Officer and the Captain are close, they have to be. But are they that close?

Why did the Captain let him in? They’d both been in an isolated area together, he reasons. Did one of them want to kill the other? Which one? Is Taehyung just paranoid?

Taehyung doesn’t realize he’s stopped outside Jin’s quarters and was just standing there like some creep until he hears Jin’s confused “Lieutenant?”

 _Fuck_. _Quick, come up with an excuse!_

“Sorry, Commander. I think the insanity of all of this has finally hit me.”

_Now, get the hell away from him._

___________________________________________________

Jimin jams his wrench back under the navigations console on the bridge. He’s trying to insert a new gyro - the old one was completely fried. But before he can insert the new one, he has to first get this mangled mess of metal out of the console. Flat on his back, he feels like Michelangelo trying to paint the Sistine Chapel. No, scratch that. He feels like a beached whale. “Come on. Come to mama.”

“Pardon, Lieutenant?”

Jimin sits up so fast he smacks his head on the console bottom. “AH! Commander!” Yoongi’s just standing there, amused, holding his case of Fancy Engineering Tools and Stuff. Aside from some random grease on his left cheek, he looks really good. Very put together. _Now’s not the time, brain._

“As you were.” Jimin reluctantly lowers himself back under the console, now embarrassed and with a lump on his head, probably. _Dammit._ Where was he?

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

READER:

Choose a POV to follow for the next chapter.

You can choose any of the crew, except Hoseok - he will be staying in Sickbay a majority of the time doing Doctorly Things.

CREW, in order of rank:

Captain Kim Namjoon

First Officer: Commander Kim Seokjin: Science Officer

Second Officer: Commander Min Yoongi: Chief Engineer

_Lieutenant Commander Jung Hoseok: Chief Medical Officer (cannot be chosen in this round)_

Lieutenant Kim Taehyung: Chief Tactical Officer

Lieutenant Park Jimin: Navigation Officer / Helmsman

Ensign Jeon Jungkook: Communications Officer

Type your vote for POV in the comments below. See above for a refresh on their positions and rank.

Choose wisely!

**Edit 10/23: Voting for this chapter is closed! Thanks to all who participated!**

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________


	2. Yoongi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone!
> 
> Thanks to all that participated last time, and I sincerely hope you do again! 
> 
> Also -
> 
> Clarification, because there are three Kims:
> 
> Captain Kim - Namjoon, although just "Captain" will be more common
> 
> Commander Kim - Jin
> 
> Lieutenant Kim - Taehyung
> 
> Taehyung is lowest in rank, and he is also the youngest Kim. Namjoon is the Captain (leader of the ship, he is also the leader of BTS), if that helps at all.
> 
> Also, PADD stands for Personal Access Display Device, which is a complicated way of saying it’s a tablet, like an iPad.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

___________________________________________________

Yoongi has had an interesting start to his day. First, he stayed up until the wee hours of the morning tailoring combadges to a) look cool and b) actually work properly. He then made everyone’s task list. He slept for a couple hours. He went to the briefing. He looked at his own task list (coded red). He went to Stellar Cartography to get the maps up and running so they could figure out where the hell they are. The maps are up (he really stuck his head in there to reach those bottom computers) but he still doesn’t know where the hell they are.

He _then_ went to Engineering to grab his toolkit, and headed up to the bridge, pausing occasionally to fully appreciate the state of disarray the _Ferox_ was in. Creaking bulkheads, blast marks on the floors, walls, and ceiling, and random hissing sounds coming from hatches all contributed. Yoongi hears a muffled _zzzt!_ sound, a puff, and smoke starts pouring out of a wall panel. The lights flickered no less than five times before he even reached the turbolift, and honestly, if a better alternative to climbing a ladder one-handed through the access tunnels existed, he would have taken it.

He steps in, keys in the bridge as his destination, and the lift makes its way up, jerking occasionally under his feet. The doors slide open, and stick at the edges, so Yoongi awkwardly slides through sideways.

Comms are on the left side of the bridge, and he can see Jimin’s feet poking out from underneath the Navigation console. He briefly thinks, _oh shit, is he dead,_ but Jimin’s muffled “Come on. Come to mama” accompanied by an irritated series of metal clanking sounds assuages his fear.

“Pardon, Lieutenant?” Yoongi replies, almost choking on a laugh because what the fuck did he just hear?

Jimin’s feet twitch and as he sits up, Yoongi hears a loud _thud_ as he bonks his head on the bottom of the console. _Habitual emotional suppression has never come in handy more than now_ , Yoongi thinks, as he swallows his laughter once again. “AH! Commander!”

Jimin’s still staring at him, though - hopefully in some semblance of embarrassment. He’s a fine Helmsman and Navigation Officer, but sometimes his ego gets a little too big.

_“I can pilot any ship you throw at me, Captain,” Jimin had said during his first away mission on the Ferox, two years ago._

_“That’s quite the claim,” Namjoon said._

_“No, sir, I can do it. Just let me sit in the cockpit and look at the controls for… ten minutes.”_

_“Permission granted, Lieutenant,” Namjoon had replied. “I’ll be back.” As Namjoon passed by in the shuttle launch bay, he looked right at Yoongi and winced comically. Yoongi grinned in response and continued running diagnostics._

_He had suddenly remembered Jimin boasting to Jungkook, who was back then their new doe-eyed crew member, that he had “never crashed, ever. Well, except that one time” but made sure to clarify that it was definitely not his fault. Then he went on to describe in detail several insane high speed shuttlepod chases (“13 ships! All around us”) that had the other senior officers rolling their eyes. But cute, naive Jungkook’s eyes followed Jimin like he was some sort of piloting god as he sauntered out of the mess hall._

_So, after Yoongi completed the diagnostics, he loaded the equipment into the shuttle, noticed a booklet sticking out of a little glovebox-like compartment, and peered intently over Jimin’s shoulder, completely invading his personal space. “Figured out how to make it ‘go’ yet?”_

_Jimin had banged his elbow into the left bulkhead as he twisted in surprise. “AH! Commander!”_

_Yoongi had put on his best ‘I’m an intimidating superior officer so you better have good news for me’ expression. “Well?”_

_“Of course I have,” he’d said, not looking Yoongi in the eyes._

_“Really? How?”_

_“It’s… this one.” Jimin gestured to a lever in the center of the control panel. All of the controls were labeled in unfamiliar, blocky symbols._

_“You sure?”_

_“…Yes.”_

_“That lever depressurizes the cabin.”_

_“O-Oh.”_

_“Yeah. Please don’t use it.”_

_“Got it. Sir.”_

_Yoongi gave him a comradely pat on the shoulder, handed him the user manual (the booklet he saw), and then left, trying to forget how broad and strong Jimin’s shoulders had suddenly seemed in the cramped little shuttlepod._

Where was he? Right. The bridge. Comms.

He decides to take pity on Jimin. After all, he _is_ a fine Helmsman and Navigation Officer. Did he say that already?

“As you were.” Yeah, he enjoys making Jimin feel flustered, maybe a little too much, but it’s just as one superior officer to a subordinate. For sure.

The lights flicker. Someone’s really gotta get to those.

He has the bulk of the work to do with fixing Comms - and to top it all off, what had started as a maybe two hour job lengthened significantly after the comms squeaked out their dying communication yesterday. They can’t even communicate within the ship to each other, much less with other vessels light-years away.

He pops open his toolkit and gets to work. It’s melted relay time.

___________________________________________________

_Two hours later_

Yoongi has gotten the comms station from dead to mortally wounded, and he really wants some food. Having been hunched over and under the console for the better part of those two hours, he’s not surprised when his back, knees, elbows, and god-knows-what-else crack as he stands up. “Fuck.”

Jimin’s oddly soothing wrenching noises had faded an hour ago and he’d left, leaving Yoongi extremely alone and tired with an aching back and an uncooperative comms station.

He sets his toolkit on top of the console with a _clunk_ , and the station gives an unenthusiastic _beep beep beep_ and the screen brightens. “Oh,” Yoongi mutters, “You like that?”

God, he sounds like Jimin, talking to machinery. He packs up his tools and decides to leave it on the bridge instead of dragging it to the mess hall. After a short mental debate over whether or not he should try to fix his uniform and look vaguely presentable, he decides that _fuck it, everyone here probably has more important things to think about_ and just heads out.

He passes Jin in the corridor, and is stuck for the first time by the eeriness of an empty ship. Normally there would be crew swarming the hallways, chatting, walking, _yes, sir_ and _no, sir_ ringing from the bulkheads as if they were being spoken by the walls themselves. He would have collided with someone else on their way to the mess hall by now, and they would have said, “sorry, sir!” with huge wide eyes and stared at him in terror until he said, “it’s fine, enjoy your meal,” like he always does.

Sure, he has a reputation of being a hardcore, no-nonsense engineer among the younger recruits. Yeah, he is a hardcore, no-nonsense engineer. Yeah, he remembers his subordinates’ birthdays. What of it?

Hey, where was Jin going? Yoongi turns to look down the hallway, and sees Jin knocking on the metal wall, leaning close to it like he’s listening for something. A light _clang, clang, clangclangclang_ echoes and Jin straightens up, satisfied, apparently, and continues on his way. Yoongi considers confronting him, saying, _dude, what the hell,_ but decides against it because he’s not a fucking idiot.

It’s suspicious, though. Very suspicious.

Jin turns the corner and Yoongi continues to the mess hall, resolved to tell whoever he can find about Jin’s strange behavior. No sense in keeping vital information to oneself.

___________________________________________________

He reaches the mess hall, having been thoroughly unnerved by the lonely clicking of his boots in the corridor, and is confronted by an expectedly (but no less forlorn for it) empty room, save for Jimin at one table and Namjoon in the opposite corner.

Yoongi replicates some thick, orange soup and a hunk of bread, and decides to sit between Jimin and Namjoon, but facing sideways so he can see both of them. “Lieutenant, Captain, have either of you seen Commander Kim lately?”

“Yeah, he ate in here with me,” Jimin says, typing away at his PADD, empty plate of… something that once involved loose vegetables pushed to the side.

“He was leaving as I came in,” Namjoon adds, picking at his bowl.

“He’s acting odd,” Yoongi says, determined to just throw this information out. There’s two of them, after all, so even if either is the impostor, one of them isn’t. “I saw him knocking on the walls on my way here. Either of you know what that was about?”

Jimin looks at him quizzically. “That’s very strange.” His tone is stilted, likely from just having ate (alone) with someone who is looking quite suspicious.

Namjoon is even more baffled. “He was what? Knocking on the walls?” He stares blankly into space, eyebrows furrowed. “Why’d he do that?”

Yoongi shrugs. “Beats me. Thought you two should know.”

“Thanks. We should all be sharing as much information as we can with each other,” Namjoon says, still with visible confusion written all over his face.

“Agreed,” Jimin says. His eyes linger on Yoongi before dropping back to his PADD.

___________________________________________________

Having been slightly energized by a meal, Yoongi walks back to the bridge to continue his work on the comms, passing Jin in the corridor again. He makes sure to give him a wide berth and a tight smile. Once on the bridge, he pops open his toolkit and finds one of his flux couplers missing. Weird. Yoongi doesn’t lock his toolkit, because the crew often needs to borrow this or that, but maybe he should start.

He shakes it off, resolving to find the culprit later, and disengages the hatch horizontal to the comms station to replace the bio-neural gel packs, which he suspects had ruptured. Hands on the handles, lowering the door to the ground, a light green liquid sprays out of the compartment from the packs and strikes his forearms. He gets a solid 0.2 seconds of stunned surprise before it eats through his uniform sleeves and starts on the flesh beneath.

It burns. _Oh god, it burns_. It feels like his forearms have been set on fire, and then someone rubbed salt into the wounds and stomped on them, too. His skin reddens, sizzles, and bubbles, blisters blooming like roses. Liquid pain shoots up his arms. Arms shaking, reflex tears streaming from his eyes, Yoongi haphazardly jams the hatch door back on, containing the spray, and collapses to the floor.

___________________________________________________

Yoongi awakes in Sickbay, pale, shiny skin grafts spread over his forearms and five concerned crewmen hunched over him like they’re about to operate on his kidneys. “Whoa, whoa, what happened?!” he demands immediately, struggling to sit up. His forearms throb.

“Jungkook found you on the bridge,” Namjoon explains, “with gigantic burns on your arms.”

Hoseok bustles over. “Skin grafts are healing nicely. All of you, back up. Give him some room to breathe.”

“Doctor? What the fuck happened to me?”

“You got burned,” Hoseok says.

“No shit.”

“It seems like an extremely distilled Recisian alcohol, like a super-shot or something,” Hoseok explains. “I’m not quite done with the analyses, but it likely came from the station we docked at.”

“So, anyone here could have gotten it easily,” Jin says.

“Probably. Anyways, fortunately for you, it’s not lethal to humans unless ingested, and it was sprayed out lightly, so no lasting damage was done. You’ll just be in pain for a few more hours until these heal up,” Hoseok says, patting his upper arm in an awkward attempt at comfort.

“Is that information accessible?” Taehyung asks. “Like in a database file or something?”

“Yes, easily,” Hoseok replies. To Yoongi, he says, “You want a painkiller?”

“God, yes.”

“Hold on,” Taehyung says. “What were you doing on the bridge?”

Disliking the sudden, accusatory change in conversation, Yoongi bristles. “Fixing comms. What were _you_ doing?”

“I was with Commander Kim, working on the sensor array. Ensign Jeon was there, too.”

“No, you weren’t. I saw Commander Kim leaving the bridge as I was entering.”

“I left for two minutes to grab a flux coupler and then went back!” Jin snaps, folding his arms over his chest. “Jeez, am I not allowed to fetch tools anymore? Jungkook was doing the same when he found Commander Min!”

“Now hold on,” Taehyung says. “Fixing a few relays in comms doesn’t take two hours. You take on any extra… tasks while you were there?”

“I was fixing comms! What are you accusing me of? Plus, Jimin was there.”

“I left an hour after you came,” Jimin says meekly. “But for the hour I was there, he was fixing comms.”

“Well, you could have just added that stuff to the packs yourself,” Taehyung says. “You heard the Doctor. It’s not lethal, it doesn’t do permanent damage, it’s just painful. Skin grafts on and in a few hours you’re shipshape.”

“Why the fuck would I do this to myself? You’re delusional.”

“I don’t think I am. This would be a great way to divert suspicion from yourself. It’s genius, really. You get injured, and then we don’t think you’re the imposter.”

“You’re absolutely insane. Doctor, you got a cure for idiocy? You’re gonna want to give Lieutenant Kim here the max dosage.”

“It is a stretch, Lieutenant,” Namjoon says.

“Yeah? If it wasn’t him, then who did it? He was alone on the bridge for a whole hour.”

“I also went to the mess hall, you fucking dumbass. Someone could have gone in and added it then!”

“Alright, who’s got an alibi for 1230 to 1300 hours?” Namjoon says.

“I do, Commander Kim does, and he does,” Taehyung points to Jungkook, who is white as a sheet and sweating, rubbing his hand on the nape of his neck. “Ensign, you good?”

“Fine. Yeah.”

“Got something to share?”

“No.” As Taehyung opens his mouth to start talking again, Jungkook cuts in with a shaky, “Well, I.” The entire group turns to stare at him, and he pales even further. “Ne-never mind.” He takes a small step back.

“Out with it, Ensign,” Yoongi says. “That’s an order.”

“I, uh. I saw Commander Kim holding some gel packs when I was going to the sensor array at around 1025 hours.” Jungkook gulps.

“Yeah, to replace the ones by the upper computer core!” Jin says.

“Sure,” Jimin says.

Their voices have doubled in volume and they’ve re-crowded around Yoongi’s bio-bed. Yoongi feels nauseous all of a sudden, and the room starts swimming. He’s too hot, and too cold, and his arms hurt, and he’s tired as balls. He looks up, panicked, and miserable, and meets Hoseok’s eye as he returns with a hypospray.

“All of you, out! Now!” He shoos them out furiously.

Yoongi feels a prick as Hoseok shoots the painkiller into his neck. “I’m gonna give you a sedative too,” he says, already loading and setting another spray.

“Sure, Doc.”

Another sting, and the room fades to black.

___________________________________________________

Yoongi dreams that he’s running through a maze, armed only with a plastic spoon, and every time he sees the end, a parade of camels suddenly comes from around the corner and blocks his view. When they finally pass, there is nothing but more shadowy maze ahead of him.

___________________________________________________

_Two and a half hours later_

Finally awake, Yoongi feels kind of okay. He’s groggy, but his arms don’t hurt anymore, and he’s not nauseous, which is a win. He’s still kind of scared to stand up for fear of aggravating whatever the hell hit him before he got shot with the sedative. He blinks a couple of times, hard, and rubs his eyes in an attempt to wake himself up. Hoseok is bustling around analyzing some tissue samples.

“Doctor?” He croaks.

“Ah, Commander, you’re awake. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good, actually.”

“Good. Let me just give you a quick check and you should be good to go.”

While Hoseok does just that, Yoongi thinks about this parasite thing. “Hey, Doctor?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t we just weigh everyone? If they’ve got the parasite, wouldn’t they have suddenly gained weight?”

Hoseok pauses his scans and purses his lips, head tilted. “I remember thinking of that, too, but I discarded it for some reason. Let me check.” He sets his tools down and grabs a stack of PADDs from his office. Scrolling through it, he points to a few highlighted lines. “Yeah, this says that its actual body is very small, and it just ends up repurposing existing flesh in the host. So there wouldn’t be extra weight that would be distinguishable from natural gain or loss.”

“Oh. Damn.”

Hoseok gives him a sympathetic smile, finishing his scans. “We’re all flying blind.”

“Literally, too, because the sensor array still isn’t fully functioning,” Yoongi says dryly, and gets a tired chuckle from Hoseok.

“Well, you’re all set. Try not to strain your arms too much.”

“Got it. Thanks, Doctor.” He hops gingerly off the bio-bed and tries to remember where the heck his tools and task list are.

“Oh, Commander?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never given you this sedative before. Your chart doesn’t indicate that it’ll be an issue, but regardless, if you get a headache, or you start feeling woozy, or anything at all, come back here immediately. Okay?”

“Okay.”

___________________________________________________

It’s 1600 hours (around 4:00 pm), which means that a whole lot of Yoongi’s day has gone down the toilet. He goes to the bridge first to get his tools and task list, which are where he left them, and makes his way to the engines to clear the manifolds. At an intersection, he pauses to check a panel with steam coming out of it (and opens it very cautiously).

The problem solved, he starts to continue his way when his head pulses, and he stumbles. These must be the side effects Hoseok warned him about.

He leans his head back until the pressure diminishes, and takes deep, slow breaths. Just as he straightens back up and turns back towards Sickbay, the corridor flashes red, the alarm blares, and the tinny computer voice comes over the loudspeakers:

“WARP CORE BREACH IN PROGRESS. WARP CORE BREACH IN PROGRESS.”

_Shit._ If the core breaches, the whole ship is going to be blown to smithereens. It needs to be fixed, and it needs to be done three minutes ago.

The main lights flicker, and then die, leaving the ship pitch-black, illuminated only by occasional flashes of the emergency-warning red light. Yoongi fumbles for his flashlight and flicks it on.

The corridor to Yoongi’s left leads to the room where he can fix the lights, fairly quickly.

If he continues straight he can get to the warp core. It will take longer to get there and to fix.

What should he do?

Fix lights and delay fixing the core, and hope that other crew members get there and fumble their way through the first steps, because with the lights off the impostor can essentially kill unseen?

Or does he run to engineering, leaving the lights off and the crew susceptible, and try to fix the core as fast as possible? As the only engineer on the ship, he alone has the expertise necessary to direct everyone.

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

READER:

Choose one option.

  1. A) Fix the lights first.
  2. B) Fix the core first.



___________________________________________________

Update: Hey there! Voting is now closed - thank you so much to everyone who participated! 

___________________________________________________


	3. The Core

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! 
> 
> Apologies that this chapter is on the shorter side - I have a few more important things to cover before we get to the vote, and this chapter would have been super bloated if I stuck them in here. 
> 
> Thank you so, so much to those of you that voted! Y'all are amazing.

Lights. Yoongi needs to fix the lights first. In the flashing red light he stumbles down the corridor, the loud blaring of the alarm ricocheting off the walls. He reaches the panel that holds the main lighting controls, and upon pulling it open, sees a series of busted wires, sparks fizzing out and dying on the floor by his boots. Most likely a power surge blew them out. 

He shuts of the power locally, and with a whine the circuits go dead. He pulls on his gloves and gets to work, splicing and reconnecting wires to work around the damaged area. 

With a dull whirr, the lights flicker back on, white-yellow bulbs creating eerily dancing silhouettes on the walls as the ship rocks and pitches. As the bulbs light up, one by one down the corridor, a distant shadow ducks hurriedly around the corner. 

___________________________________________________

Yoongi shoves his hyperspanner and his gloves haphazardly into his kit and sprints to engineering. When he arrives, he inhales a stinging lungful of gray smoke. He coughs, pain lancing through his chest and throat, and waves a hand futilely to fan it away, the burnt scent lying thick in the room. 

Vague shouting. He can’t see anything beyond shadowy figures in the smoke. He makes his way to the EPS grid and starts the complicated process of shutting it down. It’s not fast enough. 

“You! At the console!” He yells, taking in another gulp of acrid air. The warp core is electric blue, frothing. It’s shut it down, blow up, or eject it, and three of those options are bad. (Two of those options are really, really, really bad.) “Start shutting power down from that junction!” 

“Commander, on it!” It sounds like Jimin. He’s not really sure. He doesn’t have time to think about it. 

“Jeon, that you?! Get your ass to the core and start rerouting power!” 

“Yes, sir!” 

Yoongi aims his flashlight directly at the last shadow, and vaguely sees someone that looks like Taehyung wince as the light shines in his eyes. “Kim! Flood it! No, not like that!” He shoves Taehyung away and does it himself, because apparently their Tactical Officer is useless. 

As power continues to fall, the core starts to stabilize, slowly - its turbulent blue darkening, the blinding bright light in the room dulling with it. The last thing Yoongi wants to do is eject this thing, but he can’t keep it on. In its current state, it’s just far too unpredictable. 

The core is fully shut down. It’ll take a massive effort to generate sufficient power to get it back on in any capacity. If they’d started sooner, there might have been hope of getting to warp 1 (leagues faster than impulse), but now there is none. 

Jin and Namjoon finally arrive as the red flashing lights and alarm finally turn off. They look exhausted, like they ran all the way from the opposite end of the ship to get there. The silence as the alarm turns off is deafening, filling Yoongi’s ears with cotton, his head ringing with the sound of shiny lights. 

Yoongi can’t find it in himself to be sympathetic, because his eyes are still seeing red, his head throbs, and his chest is tight from the smoke. 

“Took you two long enough. If you have a moment, you can finish draining it from those consoles over there,” he snaps, waving with his spanner over to the core where Jungkook is completing the rerouting. They meekly go over to do so. Yoongi follows to check on Jungkook’s work, acutely aware of the sweat running down his brow and neck, making his hair stick uncomfortably to his forehead. He wipes at it absently with his forearm. He also realizes belatedly that he just chastised the Captain. Whoops. 

“Looks good,” Yoongi says, inspecting the relays while Jungkook watches nervously. “Really nice job.” He’s not lying - Jungkook rerouted the power quickly and cleanly. No busted wires, nothing. 

“Really? Thanks, Commander!” Jungkook grins at him, and Yoongi is reminded of how young Jungkook is. 

“Don’t let it get to your head.” The tired remark is neutralized by his hand fondly ruffling Jungkook’s hair. 

Smoke is still blanketing the room, so Yoongi jogs to the console by the doors and ramps up the ventilation. It slowly begins to clear, getting sucked up to the gigantic ducts at the sides of the room. His heartbeat starts to finally slow down to a mere gallop. 

Jin’s voice cuts through the mechanical whirring and beeping. “Captain, can I talk to y - ”

An explosion. A scream. Sparks flying by the warp core, red-yellow flames licking hungrily at the console, a thump as something heavy hits the ground. 

A hand, lying limp under the smoke. 

The Captain’s panicked command: “Computer! Emergency transport to sickbay!” 

The ship darkens, jerks as the engines falter, and Commander Kim Seokjin’s body dematerializes from the floor of main engineering. 

___________________________________________________

Yoongi joins the rest of the crew in sickbay, taking a long drink of water from his canteen in hopes of soothing his parched, itchy throat. It doesn’t really help. 

Jin looks like hell - his face, neck, and hands are covered in red, angry burns and blisters. His usually crisp uniform shirt is scorched, a still-smoking hole ripped in the center. Yoongi can see more pocked, open flesh underneath, clinging to the shirt fibers, heaving to the rhythm of Jin’s breathing. 

Hoseok scans Jin’s burns, face shuttered, every feature screaming _clinical detachment_. “There’s very severe subdermal damage here, not to mention all of this other burned tissue. This looks like an arc burn.” 

(Arc burn: heat generated from it can be as high as 4,000 degrees C - high enough to vaporize metal and ignite clothing. A form of explosion dissipates excess energy. A high-current arc can produce a pressure wave blast that can throw the victim and cause severe injury)

He narrows in on Jin’s chest. “He has organ damage. Cardiac arrhythmia. I need to put him in cryo until a better staffed and equipped team can take care of him.” 

“Cryo?” Namjoon asks, shifting from side to side. “Is that safe?” 

“Cryostasis will keep him alive. I’m not sure that I can.” He turns briskly around and starts hitting in specifications in the cryo chamber. “Min, this is a priority system. It’s going to leech power from some of the other systems.” 

“That’s fine. Do you need more power? I can poke around for any extra nonessential systems and shut them off.” 

“No, I have enough. Just warning you.” The cryostasis chamber pulls out of the wall, ribbons of pale white smoke hissing out, curling around his wrists and slithering onto the floor. 

Namjoon fidgets, tugging at his shirt collar. Hoseok turns to him. “Captain, this is my judgement call, and I honestly think it’s our best chance at saving him.” 

“I’m trusting you on this,” he replies. “Do what you need to do.” 

Hoseok loads Jin’s body into the chamber, and it hisses shut, closing into the wall like a drawer. The last tongues of smoke spill out, crawling down the walls, devilfingers. 

___________________________________________________

Half an hour later, Yoongi has taken a quick shower and is walking down the corridor towards main engineering again. The route passes Jin’s quarters, but something is off. The white door is stuck slightly ajar, the lights are off, and he can hear some sparks fizzing out of something and crackling on the floor. _Weird_. He gets a little closer, sees that Jin’s laptop has been smashed, and his personal effects are thrown around the room. _Like someone was in here looking for something._

___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

READER:

Choose what Yoongi does next. 

A) **Poke around in Jin’s quarters.** This entails: trying to figure out what the other person was looking for, and recovering the data from Jin’s laptop because someone had tried to make the data inaccessible (they did a bad job). 

\- Pros of doing A first: the person might return and do more damage. The computer files may actually become inaccessible. 

B) **Continue down to main engineering**. This entails: trying to determine where the warp core was overloaded from (no promises of finding anything), and backtracking from Jin’s exploded console to attempt to figure out where that surge came from. 

\- Pros of doing B first: he finds out this information earlier, and can thus start questioning people about where they were. It is also possible that the person might return and bang around to make it harder to backtrack.

  
___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________


End file.
